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Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid

theatlantic.com

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Re: Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid

#681

Post by zeroonetwothree »

steelbrain wrote: post #584
teractiveodular wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Metal spatulas cause damage to frying pans. How do I know which is worse, the plastic melting off my black spatula or the non-stick coating scraping off my frying pan? I suppose I could go cast iron, but I'm sure I can find a study saying those are terrible too.

You don't have to get cast-iron necessarily. Try carbon-steel. My mother doesn't like cast iron because of the maintenance required, and we don't use non-stick for the alleged health issues. Got a bunch of carbon-steel cookware and she loves it.

Carbon steel has the same maintenance requirements as cast iron. I do like it better because of weight though.

Re: Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid

#682

Post by diffeomorphism »

stronglikedan wrote: post #447
spacemark wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Metal spatulas aren't an option for most, either, as they scratch pans. So what's the suggested realistic alternative? Wood? Edit: wasn't trying to be snarky or anything. Honestly concerned for my family's health and trying to figure out the best path. Wood spatulas it is. Replacing all our PTFE pans with much more expensive cast iron pans isn't an option for our budget right now. Plus I haven't seen convincing scien…

Yes, wood is one. Why not wood?

Glue e.g. in bamboo spatulas, porosity and bacteria, hardness for scraping etc.

Usually you would use different materials for different tasks.

Re: Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid

#683

Post by reducesuffering »

potato3732842 wrote: post #605
timeon wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be funny if it was done by same people but are we sure it is the case? Is 'HN' homogeneous crowd?

At some point a behavior or pattern becomes so reliable or so frequent that it's a valid criticism of the community as a whole.

" - This one single scientific paper changes everything and you are negligent if you don’t immediately change your life based on it."

Is not a reliable, frequent, pattern that is in any way a valid criticism of the community as a whole. Incredible

Re: Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid

#684

Post by zeroonetwothree »

mtalantikite wrote: post #669
lxgr wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, these, because anything else completely ruins the fun in cooking for me, as I really don't enjoy cleaning dishes longer than I've spent cooking.

Try out carbon steel if you haven't. Season it once and it's essentially non-stick -- all I do is give mine a light rinse for a few seconds and then towel dry.

Carbon steel is not nonstick without adding oil. Also you can’t use it with acidic foods. I actually prefer stainless steel most of the time, the sticking is more of a feature for many foods since it promotes browning. (But I do use basically every type of pan for different things)

Re: Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid

#685

Post by jmdeon »

dyauspitr wrote: post #665
kristjansson wrote: post #638

The only reason to use ever plastic spatula is to avoid damaging a 'fragile' nonstick pan ... that you probably shouldn't be using anyway. Just use carbon/stainless steel pans, wood turners, and metal spatulas. Your food will be better and the implements will last ~forever.

I minimize my use of nonstick pans to as little as possible but some things are pretty much impossible to cook in stainless steel pans. Like how would you go about making over easy eggs? That’s something I have a lot of.

I cook over easy eggs a few times a week in my cast iron. Works great.

I've also done it in stainless steel and while it does work there's a bit more of a learning curve imo. Have to heat the pan first then add the oil at just the right heat (when a drop of water glides around but doesn't evaporate too fast).

All in all I'm glad I learned how to use and care for cast iron.

Re: Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid

#686

Post by mmooss »

altacc wrote: post #166

This article is brief and uses big numbers to make a scary point but I'd be interested in if there is proof of causation of significant physiological effects at the exposure level from domestic cooking. Often media will say "people exposed to Y have increased Z" but fail to mention that in studies those people worked in industrial settings with Y and the exposure level is hundreds or thousands of times higher than in…

There may be no investigation of your specific question, but is there evidence of known dangerous chemicals. If it was covered in dog poop, would you use it unless there was evidence that the use of dog-poop-covered spatula at the exposure level of domestic cooking caused significant physiological effects?

A more fundamental error is say 'there's no proof, therefore I assume it's false'. There's no proof that it's safe either. We make almost all decisions without mass longitudinal studies.

And worse, IMHO, is the poison rhetoric: 'If I can shoot their plane, I'm smarter than the person trying to fly.'

Re: Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid

#687

Post by whatshisface »

papa0101 wrote: post #674
teractiveodular wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Metal spatulas cause damage to frying pans. How do I know which is worse, the plastic melting off my black spatula or the non-stick coating scraping off my frying pan? I suppose I could go cast iron, but I'm sure I can find a study saying those are terrible too.

All non-stick frying pans die within a year or so. We recently took the plunge and invested in a stainless steel one. Yes, it takes some (very little) time to adjust your cooking style, but that thing comes with a lifetime guarantee and you don't have to worry about accidentally scratching the surface. Win-win.

How does stainless steel compare to ceramic? I find that as much as ceramic coatings are advertised as nonstick, I have to clean them anyway.

Re: Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid

#688

Post by dmurray »

ikiris wrote: post #574
dmurray wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iron filings (mostly elemental iron with some iron oxides) are used as supplements, so definitely bio-available.

But to get enough iron out of a pan to even match a single bowl of cereal you'd have to use a grinder.

Cereals run around 5 mg iron for a bowl [0].

A pan is about 1 kg (a good cast iron one could be much heavier). That's enough for 200,000 bowls of cereal.

Even if you reckon the pan is degraded enough to be obviously useless after losing 5% of its weight, that would require you to use it every day for 30 years, not "a handful of cooks".

[0] https://www.haemochromatosis.org.uk/breakfast-cereals-and-th...

Re: Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid

#689

Post by bayindirh »

papa0101 wrote: post #674
teractiveodular wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Metal spatulas cause damage to frying pans. How do I know which is worse, the plastic melting off my black spatula or the non-stick coating scraping off my frying pan? I suppose I could go cast iron, but I'm sure I can find a study saying those are terrible too.

All non-stick frying pans die within a year or so. We recently took the plunge and invested in a stainless steel one. Yes, it takes some (very little) time to adjust your cooking style, but that thing comes with a lifetime guarantee and you don't have to worry about accidentally scratching the surface. Win-win.

> All non-stick frying pans die within a year or so.

I'm very interested about how you can achieve this.

Re: Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid

#690

Post by aphantastic »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #626
aphantastic wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There exist truly exceptional gluten free waffle recipes^, might be worth a shot at least. The bone broth waffle here would be a good search root (you’ll pardon the colorful menu, I hope): https://coffeedose.cafe/pages/flagship-menu ^ I’m not even gluten free typically

Thanks! As far as I know, I don't have gluten sensitivity, but it may be something that could make a difference. Whenever I have anything made with pancake batter, I feel bloated and uncomfortable. I understand that gluten-sensitive people have much more ... adverse ... reactions. Funny, though. I can usually eat most cookies, no problem. There's something about pancake batter that does it.

There’s a spectrum of insensitivity, all the way from “I’ll die” (celiac), to “I get migraines/etc.” (classically insensitive), to “if I have a lot I feel real bad” (perhaps more folks than they realize).

Pancake batter is characterized by lots of flour and baking soda, if it’s not one it’s likely the other.

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